In case you didn’t already know, the 16th Si2-hosted conference highlighting industry progress in design flow interoperability comes to Silicon Valley (Santa Clara, CA) on October 20th. Si2Con will showcase recent progress of our members in the critical areas of:
1. Design tool flow integration (OpenAccess);
2. DRC / DFM / Parasitics interoperability (OpenDFM and OPEX);
3. Low power design (CPF. low power modeling, and CPF/UPF interoperability); and
4. Interoperable Process Design Kits (OpenPDK)
Si2 is also ramping up a brand new effort to define standards for 3D / 2.5D design of stacked die (Open3D), and this event will be an excellent opportunity to meet with Si2 and members who will be present to find out more about it. To learn more about Si2Con and register for this exciting event, go to: http://www.si2.org/?page=1490.

While I could next delve into the keynote talks and session contents, I’d rather use this opportunity to share our thinking on the event’s change in name and other behind-the-scenes aspects. Let’s begin with the name change!

Back in the early 2000’s, Si2 began hosting workshops around the new OpenAccess vision and technology, with the goal of helping advance OpenAccess adoption through sharing of requirements, experiences, technical knowledge, and broadening the interest and participation in it’s guidance and development as a true community effort. These workshops grew into the “OpenAccess Conference”, which was successful – so much so that we even doubled them to twice per year during the helter-skelter years of rapid changes and initial adoptions around the industry.

Once Si2 proved to be good stewards of OpenAccess (and LEF/DEF), our members brought us into an emerging area of need with the DFM Coalition, which also was covered in a parallel track at the OpenAccess Conference. A similar pattern repeated itself with the Open Modeling Coalition, Liberty TAB, and Low Power Coalition as well. By the time we began covering progress from the LPC in 2006, we began expanding the name slightly to “OpenAccess+ Conference”. Last year, we hinted at the broader scope of coverage with the name “Si2/OpenAccess+ Conference”, to get industry used to associating the long-familiar “OA Conference” with this broader name. All of these were interim, incremental transitions in brand management toward the final “Si2 Conference” name to reflect the full scope of coverage.

As press time drew near, we started thinking about keeping the event name short and simple, one that might lend itself to a logo. Si2 is definitely an engineering-centric organization, so logos were never very important in those early years, but as Si2 expands it’s breadth of membership across the supply chain, it becomes more important to establish a visual identity. Hence, we have begun this process by dubbing the event simply “Si2Con”, and creating a basic logo to match. We are interested in more creative name and logo ideas – we are even planning a “conference naming contest” ahead (so Watch This Space).

Why does Si2 pull together this annual conference? It’s very simple: our non-profit mission is to promote interoperability, improve efficiency, and reduce costs through enabling standards technologies – and these technologies are only valuable to the extent they are broadly adopted and used. That means bringing the right experts together on a topic to share technical challenges, educate industry peers on these new solutions, and share adoption experiences. Enthusiastic attendees tell us that one of the main benefits is networking with same-domain technical peers, listening to a wide variety of presenters that take a “flow” perspective as they do, and ability to see live demos of interoperability progress in action.

As always, an excellent luncheon will be provided, sponsored by Cadence Design Systems.